"Peter Evans is a trumpet player, and improvisor/composer based in New York City since 2003. Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation and his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Peter is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. His primary groups as a leader are the Peter Evans Quintet and the Zebulon trio. In addition, Evans has been performing and recording solo trumpet music since 2002 and is widely recognized as a leading voice in the field, having released several recordings over the past decade. He is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta) and is constantly experimenting and forming new configurations with like minded players. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation for the 2015 Newport Jazz Festival. Evans has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide and tours his own groups extensively. He has worked with some of the leading figures in new music: John Zorn, Kassa Overall, Jim Black, Weasel Walter, Levy Lorenzo, Nate Wooley, Steve Schick, Mary Halvorson, Joe McPhee, George Lewis, and performs with both ICE and the Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been releasing recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011."

"Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley's solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings "exquisitely hostile".

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him "an iconoclastic trumpeter", and Downbeat's Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, "Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole". His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he performed at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums."

"Praised for "amazing virtuosity" by The Chicago Tribune as well as his ability to "show off the instrument's malleability and freakish extended range as well as its delicacy and refinement" by The Chicago Reader, Ryan Muncy is a saxophonist who performs, commissions, and presents new music. His work emphasizes collaborative relationships with composers and artists of his generation and aims to reimagine the way listeners experience the saxophone through contemporary music. He is a recipient of the Kranichstein Music Prize awarded at the 46th International Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt, a Fulbright Fellowship in France, the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, the Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship of the Fondation des États-Unis Paris, and has participated in the creation of more than 150 new works for the instrument.

His debut solo album Hot was released by New Focus Recordings to critical acclaim, praised as "absorbing" (Alex Ross) and "one of the year's best albums" (Time Out New York). Muncy's second solo album, ism, was released in 2016 by TUNDRA/New Focus Recordings, with his performances heralded by The Chicago Tribune for their "technical prowess."

Muncy is the saxophonist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), a New York-based collective of 36 leading new-music specialists dedicated to reshaping the way music is created and experienced. During the 2018-19 season, the ensemble presented more than 180 concerts worldwide, including 45 presented through OpenICE, the ensemble's outpouring of programming which is free and public. In addition to his role as saxophonist, Muncy has served as the organization's Director of Institutional Giving (2014-present) and Co-Director of the OpenICE program (2015-2019). Additionally, he performs regularly with Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, Tilted Head Ensemble, and carries out solo projects each season in the US and Europe.

Muncy has been a soloist at international music festivals including The Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (Germany), and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City) for the U.S. premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klang, in which the New York Times described his performance of Edentia as a highlight of the entire cycle-"especially memorable... a solitary walker inside a tornado." His collaborations with composer Wang Lu have been a highlight; On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous-their ongoing collaborative project with poet Ocean Vuong and guitarist Dan Lippel-was premiered in 2017, and, in April 2019, he was soloist with the Berlin-based Ensemble Mosaik for the world premiere of Wang Lu's new work Transplant, Transpose. Additionally, Muncy has been a guest curator for the City of Chicago's Loops and Variations concert series at the Chicago Cultural Center (2013-14) and was a soloist with the Amazonas Philharmonic (Manaus, Brazil) in September 2014 for the second-ever performance of Salvatore Sciarrino's Graffito Sul Mare.

He performs frequently on major stages for contemporary music, including Wien Modern, LA Phil's Noon to Midnight, Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum (Krakow), Time Spans Festival (NYC), The Met Museum's METlive, Montréal Nouvelles Musiques International Festival, the Miller Theater's Composer Portrait Series, The Park Avenue Armory, the U.S. Library of Congress, MATA Festival, Prototype Festival, The Stone, and EMPAC at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, as well as World Saxophone Congresses in Bangkok and Montreal, TV Em Tempo (Brazil) and classical radio stations WQXR (New York), WFMT (Chicago), including Q2's Meet The Composer podcast hosted by Nadia Sirota. He has recorded for numerous labels including New Amsterdam, New Focus Recordings, Carrier Records, Kairos, Wergo, and TUNDRA.

A devoted educator and pedagogue, Muncy has served on the music faculties of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff, Alberta), Northern Illinois University's School of Music as an instructor of saxophone and music business, and has held numerous residencies and conducted arts management workshops at universities and cultural institutions across North America.

Muncy has built collaborative relationships with many composers whose works he has premiered, including Ashley Fure, Tyshawn Sorey, Steven Takasugi, Chaya Czernowin, George Lewis, Wang Lu, Wojtek Blecharz, Marcos Balter, Anthony Cheung, Christian Wolff, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Matana Roberts. His goal of bringing new music to new audiences has led to continental premieres of works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Georges Aperghis, Beat Furrer, Olga Neuwirth, Mark Andre, Liza Lim, Giorgio Netti, Enno Poppe, Pierluigi Billone, Dai Fujikura, and Hans Thomalla, amongst others.

In 2012, Muncy received the Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music, where he studied with Frederick L. Hemke. His past teachers include John Sampen (2006 MM, Bowling Green State University), John-Michel Goury (2007 C.O.P., CRR Boulogne-Billancourt, France), Jean-Yves Fourmeau (CNR Cergy-Pontoise, France), George Wolfe (2003 BM, Ball State University), Caroline Hartig, and Ron Jones. He is a Conn-Selmer Artist and performs on Selmer Paris saxophones."

"Weston Olencki is a New York City based trombonist/composer specializing in the performance and production of experimental music & art. Weston is a member of Ensemble Pamplemousse and the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, one half of RAGE THORMBONES and People Making Sounds, and has performed with Ensemble Dal Niente, wasteLAnd, wildUP!, Fonema Consort, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Talea Ensemble, sfSound, Wild Rumpus, Eco Ensemble, Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW, and a.pe.ri.od.ic - under conductors Alan Pierson, Enno Poppe, Steven Schick, Marino Formenti, and Michael Lewanski. He was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis for Performance [2016] and a Stipendiumpreis [2014] from the Darmstadt Ferienkurse.

His compositional work has been performed/commissioned by the Talea Ensemble/Earle Brown Music Foundation, Pamplemousse, Bass2Bass [Michelle Lou + Scott Worthington], People Making Sounds, trombonist Matt Barbier, clarinetist Erin Cameron, and saxophonist David Wegehaupt.

An active proponent of new repertoire, Weston has pursued individual collaborative work with composers Eric Wubbels, Katherine Young, Mauricio Pauly, Dave Reminick, Michelle Lou, Ray Evanoff, and Timothy McCormack, alongside US/world premieres of pieces by Peter Ablinger, Bernhard Lang, Elliott Carter, Michael Gordon, James Saunders, Dai Fujikura, Katharina Rosenberger, Erik Ulman, and Chris Mercer. Festival/series appearances include Alatszto Hang [Budapest], Weisslich [London], Constellation's Frequency Series [Chicago], FOCIarts [New Orleans], Permutations [NYC/SF], sfSoundSalonSeries [SF], NUNC [Chicago], Indexical [Santa Cruz], Switchboard Presents [SF], OPTION [Chicago], and Omaha Under the Radar.

Weston has held residencies at the University of California Santa Cruz, Harvard University [HGNM], NYU, and Stanford University, with upcoming residencies at Northwestern and CalArts. He has recorded for HatHut, Sound American, Indexical, and Clean Feed with forthcoming releases on Carrier."

"Ross Karre is a percussionist and temporal artist based in New York City. His primary focus is on combining media, including classical percussion performance, electronics, theater, moving image, visual art, and lighting design. He designs integrated, moving images that emerge from an aesthetic foundation in American experimental music as well as that of the European avant garde. Ross is a percussionist and the co-artistic director for the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

His projection design has been presented in such prestigious venues as the BBC Scotland (Glasgow Concert Halls), The Park Avenue Armory, Miller Theatre (NYC), and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Kennedy Center. As a percussionist, he has worked closely with European masters such as Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, Olga Neuwirth, and Harrison Birtwistle. Karre has been a percussionist and staff member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) since 2011 and also performs regularly with Third Coast Percussion (Chicago), red fish blue fish, and the National Gallery of Art new music ensemble.

Using his background as a percussionist, production manager, and projection designer, Ross is active as a production coordinator and designer of several intermedia operas and staged works by Ashley Fure, Pauline Oliveros, Suzanne Farrin, and many more. He has collaborated as a producer/designer on the world's largest scale productions at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, Ojai Festival, and Lincoln Center.

As a teacher, Ross is a regular guest lecturer and clinician on topics ranging from contemporary percussion and media to arts administration and professional development. He has been invited to return to his alma maters of Oberlin Conservatory, UCSD, and Interlochen Arts Academy as well as the Eastman School, Bard College, the Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshops, and dozens more. Ross has organized several unique university residencies for the International Contemporary Ensemble at RPI, Kent State, MacAlester, the University of Michigan and other institutions in South America and Europe.

As a traveling artist, Ross has presented work at nearly every major festival in Europe and the United States including those in Lucerne, Darmstadt, Holland Festival, Ojai Festival, Mostly Mozart, Aspekte Festival (Austria), Eight Bridges (Cologne), Rotterdam, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Banff (Canada), Mona Foma (Tasmania), Far North (Greenland), and the Park Avenue Armory.

In 2011, Ross commenced two major archiving projects which seek to document and distribute recorded performances of hundreds of artist-clients all of the world. The rKAD media collective and metafields​.org have become vital parts of the contemporary music scene by preserving and proliferating the important works of emerging and established artists."

"Dr. Cimini earned her Ph.D. in Historical Musicology in 2011 from New York University. Prior to her appointment at UC San Diego, she held an Andrew W. Mellon Post- Doctoral Teaching Fellowship in Music Theory from the University of Pennsylvania from 2011-2013 as well as a visiting position in Music Theory at the College of William and Mary from 2010-2011. Cimini is a historian and performer of music from the 20th and 21st centuries. Broadly, she is interested how performers, composers and audiences practice and theorize listening as an expression of community, sociability and political alliance, with special focus on improvisation, sound art and installation practices. Her book project, Listening in the Future Tense, examines the use of biological and ecological sound sources in late 20th century experimental music circles. Listening in the Future Tense animates surprising connections between these practices and developments in bioengineering, medicine and policy in the U.S. in order to understand how techniques of listening attuned to bodies, built spaces and ecological systems distribute knowledge, agency and security unevenly across the socio-political field. Cimini is also an active violist working across improvised, rock, noise and contemporary classical genres. She views performing, touring and recording as unique opportunities to merge research with creative practice. In her teaching, she draws on this experience to animate discussion, debate and creative engagement with how notions of identity and community are formed in situated events of performance and listening, from the concert hall to the classroom. Cimini looks forward to offering in courses in 20th century music history and music theory that reflect her commitments to critically engaged performance as well as specialized courses in music and political thought, philosophies of music, acoustic ecology as well as sound and new media."

As a violist, she plays with improvising duo Architeuthis Walks on Land with bassoonist and composer Katherine Young as well as Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Orchestra. She's working on a solo album for San Diego-based label Bedclub Records.

"The curious timbres, expressive noises, and kinetic structures of my electroacoustic music explore the dramatic physicality of sound, shifting interpersonal dynamics, and associations with the familiar and the strange. The LAPhil's Green Umbrella series, Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW, Ensemble Dal Niente, Third Coast Percussion, Spektral Quartet, Weston Olencki, Nico Couck / Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Fonema Consort, and others have commissioned my music. I'm excited about coming-soon (and soon-to-be recent) projects with Lucy Dehgrae for Resonant Bodies Festival, WasteLAnd and RAGE, Distractfold Ensemble's Linda Jankowska, Callithumpian Ensemble, and Yarn/Wire. I'm releasing new music this year with Michael Foster & Michael Zerang, Wet Ink, and Amy Cimini (as Architeuthis Walks on Land).

As a bassoonist and improviser, I amplify my instrument and employ a flexible electronics setup. My debut solo album garnered praise in The Wire ("Bassoon colossus") and Downbeat ("seriously bold leaps for the bassoon"). Collaboration is central to my practice, and I perform regularly as a soloist, in ad hoc improvised groups, and with my long-standing ensembles Pretty Monsters, Architeuthis Walks on Land, and Till by Turning."

"Jeff Snyder (b.1978) is a composer, improviser and instrument-designer living in Princeton, New Jersey, and active in the New York City area.

As founder and lead designer of Snyderphonics, Jeff designs and builds unusual electronic musical instruments. His creations include the Manta, which is played by over 150 musicians around the world; the JD-1 Keyboard/Sequencer, which was commissioned as a specialty controller for Buchla synthesizers; and the custom analog modular synthesizer on which he regularly performs.

Jeff is a member of experimental electronic duo exclusiveOr, avant jazz group The Federico Ughi Quartet , improvisatory noise trio The Mizries, and laptop ensemble Sideband. He fronts the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves as his electro-country alter-ego, Owen Lake. He also composes alternate-reality Early Music for an ensemble of his invented instruments.

In 2009, Jeff co-founded an experimental music record label, Carrier Records , which continues to release strange and exciting experimental music. In 2011, he received a doctorate with distinction in Music Composition from Columbia University. He currently is the Director of Electronic Music at Princeton University, and the Director of PLOrk , the Princeton Laptop Orchestra."

"Sam Pluta is a New York City-based composer, laptop improviser, electronics performer, and sound artist. Though his work has a wide breadth, his central focus is on the laptop as a performance instrument capable of sharing the stage with groups ranging from new music ensembles to world-class instrumental improvisers. By creating unique interactions of electronics, instruments, and sonic spaces, Pluta's vibrant musical universe fuses the traditionally separate sound worlds of acoustic instruments and electronics, creating sonic spaces which envelop the audience and resulting in a music focused on visceral interaction of instrumental performers with reactive computerized sound worlds. As a composer of instrumental music, Sam has written works for Wet Ink Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Timetable Percussion, Mivos Quartet, RIOT Trio, Ensemble Dal Niente, Jessie Marino, Mantra Percussion, TAK, Dave Eggar, and Prism Saxophone Quartet. His compositions range from solo instrumental works to pieces for ensemble with electronics to compositions for large ensemble and orchestra. In addition to acoustic and electro-acoustic works, Pluta has written extensive solo electronic repertoire ranging from multi-channel acousmatic compositions to solo laptop works with video to laptop ensemble compositions for up to 15 players.

As an improviser, Sam has collaborated with some of the finest creative musicians in the world, including Peter Evans, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Craig Taborn, Jim Black, Anne La Berge, and George Lewis. Sam is a member of multiple improvisation-based ensembles, the jazz influenced Peter Evans Quintet, the free improvisation-based Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Peter Evans), the analog synth and laptop duo exclusiveOr (with Jeff Snyder), his longstanding duo with Peter Evans, and the New York City-based power group Sonic Overload (with Jim Altieri, Dan Peck, Tom Blancarte, Peter Evans, and Jeff Snyder). Sam has also performed with the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. With these various groups he has toured Europe and America and performed at major festivals and venues, such as the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the Moers and Donaueshingen Festivals in Germany, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, and The Vortex in London. Sam is the Technical Director for the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group for whom he is a member composer as well as principal electronics performer. As a performer of chamber music with Wet Ink and other groups, in addition to his own works, Sam has performed and premiered works by Peter Ablinger, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Katharina Rosenberger, George Lewis, Ben Hackbarth, Alvin Lucier, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels among others.

Dr Pluta studied composition and electronic music at Columbia University, where he received his DMA in 2012. He received Masters degrees from the University of Birmingham in the UK and the University of Texas at Austin, and completed his undergraduate work at Santa Clara University. His principal teachers include George Lewis, Brad Garton, Tristan Murail, Fabien Levy, Scott Wilson, Jonty Harrison, Russell Pinkston, Lynn Shurtleff, and Bruce Pennycook. A dedicated pedagogue, Sam teaches Composing with Sound and Technology and Improvisation at Bennington College. From 2011-15 he directed the Electronic Music Studio at Manhattan School of Music, and has taught Music Humanities and The History of Sound Art at Columbia University. For the past 15 years he has taught composition, musicianship, electronic music, and an assortment of specialty courses at the Walden School, where he also serves as Director of Electronic Music and Academic Dean."